2018 Top 200 MLB Draft Prospects

Baseball America’s Top 200 prospects for the 2018 draft was compiled in consultation with scouts and evaluators from major league clubs.

With Major League Baseball's offseason proceeding at a glacial pace this year, here at Baseball America we wanted to speed things up in regards to the 2018 MLB Draft.

With scouting departments just now meeting to go over plans for the 2018 season and identify priority follows for the college and high school classes, there will be significant changes between now and the draft.

That said, we wanted to offer an early glimpse at a strong 2018 draft class. This is a snapshot of where the draft rankings stand five months from draft day. By the time the final BA 500 is released some players on this list will take big steps forward and others will slide off draft boards. Some will succumb to injury and still others will pop up that currently aren't on our radar. During the 2017 draft class for example, righthanders Michael Mercado and Sam Carlson were not on the initial top 100 list released in late March. However as the spring went on, both pitchers impressed and were eventually drafted in the second round.

These rankings will shift as players develop and as Baseball America accumulates more information. These rankings are an attempt to capture the industry's current consensus on the talent, track record and experience of the 2018 class as it stands in early January. As always, while we are concerned with reporting how the draft will unfold, these rankings do not reflect where we believe these players will be taken, but how the industry values each player's major league potential and the risks that come alongside that.

Before we get into the rankings, here's a breakdown of the class demographics, with the top 200 players in the final BA 500 of the 2017 class in parentheses for perspective on how this year's class differs at this early stage.

2018 Overall

2017 Overall

2018 HS

2018 College

Catcher

14

18

7

7

Corner INF

14

20

8

6

Middle INF

27

27

16

11

Outfield

39

29

16

23

LHP

28

27

15

13

RHP

78

79

32

46

Hitters

94

94

47

47

Pitchers

106

106

47

59

Total Players

200

200

94

106

*It is worth noting that Oregon State LHP Luke Heimlich is not on this list. This is not an oversight. In 2017 Heimlich would have ranked as a supplemental first round to second round talent before the Oregonian reported in June that in the past Heimlich pled guilty to sexually molesting a 6-year-old family member. Every MLB team removed him from their draft board and the junior went undrafted. He then remained unsigned even though as an undrafted draft eligible junior he was eligible to sign with any team as a free agent. In our reporting, multiple teams said they have yet to figure out how they will deal with Heimlich in the 2018 draft.